Goodbye John Nash: For the first time in Game Theory one man’s loss is everyone else’s too

J.F. Nash is a name that’ll send a bell ringing in everyone’s mind if for no better reason than just because of the Oscar-winning Russell Crowe movie. Those who can associate with the name will realize the loss humanity has suffered.

John Nash and his wife Alicia Nash passed away in a fatal taxi crash on the New Jersey Turnpike, on Saturday.

The demise of the renowned Mathematician will be a great blow to blackjack players, economists and writers banking on Nash’s ideas to explore the relation between God and game theory, to say the least.

Nash’s contribution to Game Theory, like the Nash Equilibrium, Nash Program and Bargaining problem helped bring the theory out of obscurity and into the application based world of economics.

Nash is the classic case of ‘disturbed’ genius. Born in Bluefield, West Virginia, United States, he was awarded the George Westinghouse Scholarship, a full scholarship to the Carnegie Institute of Technology at the age of 16. In April, 1959, Nash was admitted to McLean Hospital, where he was subsequently diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

John Nash won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994 because of his 27-page dissertation, “Non-Cooperative Games,” written in 1950 when he was 21.

John Nash’s life and works are reminiscent of the common ground between Genius and madness and how people at that juncture place constantly face torture and deliverance at the same time.

Genius is a spark, nothing more. John Nash’s original 1949 paper, all of 5 paragraphs, that won him the Nobel Prize: http://t.co/se9Ylx5vo1

Criticising the US President Donald Trump for his protectionists policies, Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman on Saturday accused President Trump of not taking his jobs seriously. Following the protectisists measures taken by the US President, there could be “risks of disruptive trade war”, he said.

President Donald Trump is heavily criticised. Wikimedia Commons

“He does not take the job seriously. He doesn’t say to himself that I am the most important official in the world; I have better do my homework for understanding the issue. ..He just goes that these are my gut feeling and hires people who make him feel good…that is a frightening prospect,” Krugman said responding to a query on his perception on Trump. On the economic issues President Trump’s gut feelings are “protectionist” and his views of America were “50 years out of date”.

“He wants America a heavy industrial country in the way it was when he was a young man. That is not just going to happen but he attempts to make it happen, which is extremely disruptive to America and to the global as a whole,” Nobel Laureate said. Krugman said he was until recently optimistic that Trump’s protectionist policies would not see the light of the day.

“Until about two weeks ago, I was quite optimistic that it would not happen. The reason was not because the President would get good economic advice but because the US businesses are invested in a globalised economy. All the investments the businesses have made is based upon the assumptions that the open trading system would continue. There is an enormous amount of fiscal capital and a large number of jobs are dependent on these value chains,” he said at the News18 Rising India Summit here.

Krugman further said: “I had assumed the influence of these business communities would be sufficient… that it would not happen. I am less optimistic now…we have seen reasonably sensible Economic Council Head was fired, completely irrational tariff (was) imposed on steel and aluminium.”

Krugman says these actions of President can cause a trade war. Wikimedia Commons

According to him, immediate issue is going to be confrontation not with China, but with Europe as the “steel tariffs” will hit Europe. He said there are possible risks of “disruptive global trade war”.

Speaking on Chinese economy he said, “China is a financial crisis waiting to happen. China is a widely unbalanced economy…the country is sustaining itself with a credit bubble that is waiting to burst…There is a significant risk of Chinese bubble burst.”